[Book Review] Soft Apocalypse

A human perspective on a fictional societal and ecological collapse

Soft Apocalypse, by Will McIntosh is fascinating. An honest review of the book requires a preface: I do not like the protagonist.

With that stated, I found the the novel to be a deeply honest look at the nature of systems collapse from the perspective of an average citizen. That is to say, from the perspective of the average city-dwelling neoliberal. The protagonist is a generic liberally-minded, over-socialized everyman who eschews violence, shrinks from conflict, and is heavily invested in a mentality of perpetual harm-avoidance in the Kaczynskian sense. It is from that perspective that the book is written. In some ways it reads like a progressives projection regarding the working underclass to an almost comical degree: The protagonist is effectively cucked by a black man, the protagonist has a degree in sociology, the protagonist bursts into tears at a moments notice and remains socially awkward in most settings. Like many urbanites, he has difficulty meeting new people. For the duration of the novel I found it incredibly difficult to discern whether the protagonist was an intentional caricature, or the fantasy-projection of a completely oblivious author. Jury is still out on that one.

For as much as the protagonist may be subject to contempt, the other characters and the world inhabited by them remains vivid. The book was written in 2011, and the story takes place between the years of 2020 and 2035 or so. The real character here is the world that the protagonist drifts through as goods and services become less and less accessible, and the political bureaucracy begins breaking down. Medicines go from expensive to rare, to nonexistent over the course of fifteen years. The culture even begins to embrace the nihilism of collapse in different ways with different ideologies vying for dominance. In some ways the novel was almost prescient in describing the intermittent supply-chain problems that characterize the post-pandemic era. In other ways it was far off the mark; tinged with the enthusiasm for high technology of the 2000’s. The book never strays too far from a very grounded reality, one that hits particularly close to home for us, now living through the decades described in the book.

Issues:

The following is a list of failings in the text which mostly revolve around sociological and psychological misunderstands on behalf of the author. While it is frustrating to read through… they don’t detract spectacularly from the world-building. The world of the book is a portrayal I’d like to see more of but form the perspective of a relatable character.

Environmentalism

The book has an obvious environmentalist message in it, but it does not hammer the reader over the head with it. Rather, it recognizes environmental degradation, but never points a finger of blame or imagines some magical scenario where we fix anything. Slow environmental degradation is simply a fact of life. Indeed a number of wayward scientists develop methods for furthering the collapse using biotechnology to make nature even more hostile to human infrastructure.

Systems Collapse and Post-Industrial Society

The book accurately portrays the decay of an industrial society, but fails to understand human behaviors as we approach Malthusian limits. There is no false platitude about returning to nature, a point made clearly in the book. Without modern technology trivial maladies can be death sentences. Field surgery with make-shift tools and a total lack of skill might be your only option. It does not portray a noble return to nature, it portrays nature reclaiming human savagery that was briefly driven off by the industrial revolution. The people are dirty, desperate, and starving while experts become fewer and further between. The protagonist is the NPC in this environment, not a heroic character, not even a character some one of heroic mind could identify with, just another idiot who kept thinking things would get better on their own.

The protagonist

The protagonist of the book never gets over his own neoliberal sensibilities, despite the horror of the collapse, absolutely brutal deaths of some of his closest friends, and near-starvation survival. He never questions his upbringing. He always tries to justify his behavior as self-defense on the rare occasion he dines to fight for anything. The protagonist has no understanding of a spirituality besides materialism in a world that has lost almost all material value.

By the end of the book the protagonist finally begins to understand that survival isn’t pretty, and that violence against his fellow man isn’t the ultimate evil, but shrinks from it like the coward he is. He does not understand people that are not-like-him, and he doesn’t have the capacity to survive in a world where he isn’t shielded by some one willing to commit violence on his behalf. Toward the end of the book he finally comes to realize that he doesn’t belong in this world, but instead of choosing to reevaluate his ideals, clings to the nearest simulacrum of old civilization. Despite all evidence, the protagonist refuses to acknowledge the realities of the world: Might is Right, and Survival of the Fittest are simply ideas that can’t fit into his world view, and he’s too much of a coward to permit reality to trump his delusions.

Just give every one MDMA, Bro

The author seems to understand that humanity is inherently survival-oriented and tribe-oriented. Yet the author seems to take this as a fundamental flaw. There is a critical plot arc where a virus that produces psychedelic effects is introduced into to the population. The result is that those infected, being perpetually tripping balls, are fundamentally socially different from uninfected people. The author implies that this some how fixes the moral failings of humanity. That if every one could just have the right set of experiences, they would agree with the authors semi-pacifistic world view. The arc kind of reads like an ultimate “Why can’t we all just be kind to each other” argument.

A fundamental misunderstanding of Moral Violence.

The author does not seem to understand any real distinction between violence and moral violence. At one point there is a very brief aside where the author attempts to write on behalf of moral violence and fails spectacularly. It’s only a paragraph, so it doesn’t really detract from the overall story, but it does inscribe a very clear line in the authors own abilities. The author portrays violence as a rarely necessary universal evil rather than the universal force of authority which dominates societies. The authors failure to understand violence as a mechanism of survival and governance is buried deep in the text.

With that said, the story is in first person, and the protagonist clearly also does not understand the nature of violence either. It is only when another perspective is presented that the author so clearly displays a lack of understanding. The author does not understand how a virtuous crusader standing atop a heap of blasphemers bodies could regard himself as morally good. The concept of righteousness is at best not-present in the novel and at worst regarded as a fantasy of the deranged. That is exactly how the characters regard it.

Conclusions and Lessons

As much as this discussion highlights flaws within the text, those flaws are highlighted because of the brilliance of the rest of the piece. The story itself is simple and grounded. The environment created is highly specific to the south east United States but seems to accurately summarize a future that we could easily be living through the early stages of. Bureaucratic failure followed by fiscal collapse followed by industrial collapse, finally resulting in factions forming and nihilism becoming rampant in a failed society (that sounds familiar).

One thing that the author portrays accurately is the concept of life going on. At no point in the book can you say “yes, now the collapse has happened.” rather it just keeps going and quality of life keeps on deteriorating. The wealthy first move to cities, then to gated neighborhoods, then factories run out of parts or run out of personnel willing to work for a pittance. Cellphones are functional right up to the end of the book and people migrate to more functional areas over time slowly causing congestion and even more housing crises. Authority is maintained by progressively less organized and more violent forces and eventually the only real authority is whoever is holding the gun.

The author doesn’t describe a great ecological catastrophe, or a virus, or a zombie apocalypse, rather it’s the slow-roll of decaying civilization. Technology becomes more advanced even as the average persons life becomes harder, shorter, and more violent. For those interested in seeing what the decline of industrial empire looks like: this is it. I highly recommend the book, I don’t expect you to like the protagonist, or even to like the author. Rather the book is like a painting, and behind the characters in the foreground lays a beautiful cacophony of decay that mirrors our world in far more stark relief than it has any right to.

Good luck out there, we’re all in this one together.